


come back

by tori_lawrence



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fake AH Crew, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:39:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23964001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tori_lawrence/pseuds/tori_lawrence
Summary: Memories and nightmares and reality. What's real anymore?
Relationships: Ryan Haywood/Ray Narvaez Jr.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	come back

Water droplets fell heavy with intense pressure from outside of the bedroom. Ryan’s world was hot and humid as he lay still and silent, staring at the ceiling as tears ran down his face. It doesn’t happen every time he sleeps, but often enough. He feels the heavy weight on his chest as if stone after stone were being piled on top of him. It’s hard to breathe without a sob choking its way out of the hollow cavern behind his sternum. Crying like this was better than the alternative, which was curling up into a ball, inducing a panic attack, and shooting anything that dared to move within his line of sight.  
It was always the same damn thought that crept its way back into the forefront of Ryan’s mine from the deep recesses of where it usually laid. Everything would be going fine, this day’s- week’s- month’s heist going perfectly according to plan but then, without rhyme or reason, everything went to shit. “Tits up,” he heard through the comms, in his mind. When things fell apart and there was no backup to the backup to the backup plan, the protocol was simple ‘scatter.’ Never making it inherently obvious to anybody but the in crowd how many people from the team were on a particular heist, authorities often had trouble trusting their trail as they were often and easily mislead, but when everything went wrong beyond all repair, the entire crew would scatter to the far reaches of the city. Safety came in numbers, but when those numbers were split between up to twelve of the most dangerous people on the coast and across your entire jurisdiction, safety was about as good as dead. Ryan never left the scene without him though.  
Nothing on god’s green earth was more important to Ryan than the absolute love of his life, Ray. The unassuming at first glance sharpshooter. Ryan would bend over backward for the man; he had killed for and with Ray so many times he had almost built himself a reputation of exclusively protecting his partner, but then people remembered all the torture and arson and etc. under Ryan’s belt. Ray put off an aura of apathy and cold indifference, he completely separated his work from himself, becoming an entirely different person when staring through a scope or down the barrel of a gun. When dealing with close range and hand to hand combat, Ray killed only when necessary for his or Ryan’s survival but closed his eyes when delivering a fatal blow. Ryan, however, was completely engrossed with his Vagabond character. Ryan had always leaned into method acting, Stanislavsky method and such, so when he was particularly riled up he blurred the line between Ryan Haywood and the Vagabond. Ray always brought him back to the brink of sanity though, with the slightest of touches or a faint and calming ‘Ryan.’  
Nights like these made Ryan want to fall off the edge and never look back. Remembering gunshots and blood and screaming, seeing that beautiful face twisted in pain and desperation. Ryan had fire in his eyes, liquid rage pooling and, at the blink of an eye, disappearing down the side of his face. So many different conflicting emotions welled up inside of his head into one big, wordless clusterfuck of indescribable feeling. Ryan hated it. Not the feeling part, but the part where he felt so incredibly stupid and useless because he couldn’t express exactly what he was feeling. So instead he just cried. Over the loss, and the pain, and the heartbreak. But most importantly, and overwhelmingly, over the failure. The failure he felt rattle him to his very core, that could shake him out of his light slumber, the failure that could knock him off of his feet.  
Bullets whipping by is a sound you don’t soon forget, but one sound that will never leave a person’s mental archive is the sound of a bullet piercing through human flesh. You hear the metal whiz through the air in your direction, like you have a thousand times before, but suddenly, it doesn’t pass by your ear. You hear it stop with a wet thunk. You look over to your right and all you see is your partner looking straight at you, then your mind starts to process the blood. He falls, from his crouched position onto the asphalt of the alley that you were hiding away in under the cover of late evening. The streetlamps have just begun to flicker on as the sun sets slowly behind the skyline and sinks under the horizon. But you can’t see that. All you see is red. So you grab him and apply pressure to the gunshot wound on his shoulder and you keep him talking to you so that he doesn’t lose consciousness. You ask about the latest first person shooter game to come out and you already know what he’ll say about it being one game standing on another game’s shoulders in a trench coat trying to buy tickets to the R-rated film, but all you really hear is that he is awake and still responsive. So you pick him up and you start running. And you run like fucking mad, like your life depends on it, like his life depends on it, because it does. And you run and run until you can’t anymore, long after the threat had been left behind, after tears had started to pour from your eyes, after he had stopped talking to you a couple blocks ago. He stopped talking? You had run all that way to the rendezvous point where medical help was already attending to the rest of the crew. Your burst into the house, covered in blood, and you wish with every fiber in your being that it was your, but it wasn’t. The limp body in your arms is taken away from you as your ears go numb to questions and shouts of concern. You watch blood drip from his perfect fingertips onto cold unfeeling tile as he is whisked away from you. You lose consciousness yourself, you’re still awake, but it’s just not you. And all of sudden you are back in your body with corpses on blood stained asphalt in front of you. You look down to your blood covered hands and drop the knife. Of course it was a knife. Guns were too clinical, too impersonal for such a job.  
Water droplets fell until they fell no more, bathroom door opening with a small drift of steam, followed by a pleasant scent of lavender and honey. A soothing voice came into the room and caressed Ryan’s ears, calling out Ryan’s name and a request for assistance. “Ryan, dear, could you come in here and help me change my bandages. You know that I just can’t wrap gauze as well as you.” Ryan shook himself from his daze and sat up on the bed. “Just a minute Ray,” he called back. Ryan slipped on his bedroom shoes and made his way to the bathroom. Ray was sitting on the toilet, dressed in his underwear with his clean shirt folded neatly on the counter top. Beside the shirt was the wound dressings which Ryan grabbed a hold of and began gently wrapping Ray’s shoulder with it. As soon as he was finished, he stood, grabbed Ray’s clean shirt off the counter, handed it to him, kissed the top of his head, and turned to leave.  
“Come back.” Ryan stopped but didn’t turn to face Ray. “Ryan, come back here please.” He turned and looked Ray in the eye. Ray stood while gingerly pulling his shirt over his head. “Ryan you know it wasn’t your fault. It’s okay to cry and feel whatever emotions you are feeling, but guilt shouldn’t be there.” Ray stepped up to Ryan and looked up at him from his place at Ryan’s chest. He reached his uninjured arm up to Ryan’s face to wipe at the tear tracks that had settled on Ryan’s cheeks. Ryan carefully placed his arms around the shorter man and pulled him into a gentle hug as a soft hand came up to stroke through long blonde locks. An entirely fresh onslaught of tears fell from Ryan’s eyes as he broke down in his partner’s arms. And he felt his emotions to the fullest extent, and Ray let him, and was there for him. And they were there for each other. And that’s what mattered.


End file.
